Commercial aircraft, ground vehicles, military aircraft, rotorcraft, unmanned air or land vehicles, and other mobile structures often include centralized or federated computing systems that are used to provide standards compliant computing resources for the various subsystems used to operate the mobile structure. Each subsystem typically includes user interfaces, sensors, actuators, and/or other modules, and a centralized or federated computing system can be used to interconnect the modules to their subsystems and/or interconnect the subsystems to each other. A centralized or federated computing system can also be configured to provide processing, storage, system communication (e.g., networking and/or system specific signal inputs and outputs), and/or other resources as needed to each subsystem or group of subsystems.
However, conventional centralized computing system architectures do not provide data and/or execution security across the available processing, storage, and communication resources, or they require complete adherence to proprietary interfaces and/or protocols that severely limit the upgrade path of components of the centralized computing system and of any subsystems coupled to the centralized computing system. In some cases, a lack of data and/or execution security can further limit the upgrade path due to various regulatory restrictions, such as unsecured technology export restrictions. Lack of security and limited upgrade path can severely negatively impact the marketability of the centralized system, the subsystems, and even the mobile structure in which they are installed, such as when an end user prefers not to be locked into using a particular manufacturer's selection of subsystems and does not want to bear the expense of removing the centralized computing system from the chassis of the mobile structure and replacing it wholesale just to upgrade a selection of subsystems or, conversely, of replacing all subsystems when the centralized computing system is upgraded or one subsystem upgrade requires a secure computing environment. Thus, there is a need for an improved methodology to provide a scalable and secure federated computing system architecture, particularly for use in the operation of mobile structures.